1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to a method and apparatus for providing virtual mobile phone numbers.
2. Background Art
With the rapid development of mobile communication systems, there are cases in which phone numbers assigned to mobile communication terminals are inevitably disclosed. Particularly, in an environment, such as the Internet, where many unspecified persons freely share information, the disclosure of the phone numbers results in telemarketing calls and short messages that are a kind of spam, which eventually becomes a factor that considerably invades persons' privacies.
In order to resolve this problem, a service of assigning two phone numbers to a single terminal was proposed. However, this service has a problem in that increased load on a home location register is generated because two phone numbers are assigned to a single terminal. In order to provide this service, specialized numbers other than numbers which are assigned to general terminals must be assigned, so that there is a restriction due to the limitation of numeric resources.
As a result, a system which allows users to use virtual phone numbers for the case where users do not want to reveal their own information, or an additional purpose, such as the reception of messages, and enables numbers assigned to general terminals to be used, without causing a load on various mobile communication network resources, such as a home location register, is required.